United States

Former US Speaker John Boehner has said that it is very likely that Hillary Clinton will withdraw from the presidential race due to her email scandal. Boehner has been speculating that Hillary Clinton’s legal troubles are so serious that it’s possible we will see Vice President Joe Biden “parachuting” into the race at the last minute Speaking at the SALT conference in Las Vegas on Thursday, Boehner said that Democrats may need to turn to Biden to be their 2016 nominee.

Global stocks have started Friday the 13th on the wrong foot, with not only Hong Kong GDP unexpectedly tumbling by 0.4%, the worst print in years while retail sales fell for a thirteenth straight month in March, the longest stretch since 1999 as the Chinese hard landing spreads to the wealthy enclave, but also following a predicted collapse in Chinese new loan creation, which will reverberate not only in China but around the globe in the coming weeks.

Submitted by Tom Engelhardt via TomDispatch.com,

There are the news stories that genuinely surprise you, and then there are the ones that you could write in your sleep before they happen. Let me concoct an example for you:

“Top American and European military leaders are weighing options to step up the fight against the Islamic State in the Mideast, including possibly sending more U.S. forces into Iraq, Syria, and Libya, just as Washington confirmed the second American combat casualty in Iraq in as many months.”

Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) is criticizing the Obama administration as having tried to strong-arm a former senator who is pushing to declassify 28 pages of the 9/11 report dealing with Saudi Arabia.

 

In a dramatic development for the global nuclear balance of power, yesterday we reported that starting today, the United States would launch its European missile defense system dubbed Aegis Ashore at a remote airbase in the town of Deveselu, Romania, almost a decade after Washington proposed protecting NATO from Iranian rockets and despite repeated Russian warnings that the West is threatening the peace in central Europe.